Paulus Traudenius (? in Gouda – 9 July 1643 in

Batavia, Dutch East Indies Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residen ...

) was the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

Governor of Formosa from 1640 to 1643. Traudenius was a descendant of a family of teachers in Gouda. His grandfather, also Paulus Traudenius, was in 1573 the first rector of the local Latin school after the

reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

and had Latinized his original name Trudens to Traudenius. In 1630 grandson Traudenius is registered as a merchant for the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

in Tayouan on

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. In 1633 he became a head merchant at Quinam, but was also active along the coast of China, in the

Pescadores The Penghu (, Hokkien POJ: ''Phîⁿ-ô͘'' or ''Phêⁿ-ô͘'' ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, located approximately west from the main island of Taiwan, covering an area ...

and on

. He married twice, in April 1633 in Batavia with Elisabeth de Meester from Rotterdam, and in 1641 at Fort Zeelandia with Adriana Quina, widow of the former governor of Taiwan, Johan van der Burg. In 1643 he was recalled from Formosa to Batavia, where he soon thereafter died.

Acts as governor

Two years after the Dutch established Fort Zeelandia in southern Taiwan, the Spanish responded by establishing a fort at Santissima Trinidad in 1629 and

Fort Santo Domingo Fort Santo Domingo is a historical fortress in Tamsui District, New Taipei City, Taiwan. It was originally a wooden fort built in 1628 by the Spanish Empire, who named it "Fort Santo Domingo". However, the fort was then destroyed by the Spani ...

in 1629. By 1641 the Spanish had become such an irritant to the Dutch in the south that it was decided to take northern Taiwan from the Spanish by force. In the usual courteous terms, Traudenius informed the Spanish governor of their intentions. The Spanish governor was not inclined to give in so easily, and replied in kind. Subsequently, on 24–27 November 1641, the Dutch launched an assault on the northern regions, but the Spanish positions were well-defended and the attacking troops were not able to breach the walls of the fortresses. They returned, thwarted, to Fort Zeelandia, but a second attack in 1642 was effective and the Spanish abandoned their bases on Formosa.

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Traudenius, Paulus Year of birth missing 1643 deaths Colonial governors of Dutch Formosa People from Gouda, South Holland